Climbing Trees
by crackinthecup
Summary: Maedhros and Fingon are interrupted. Elenwë takes Aredhel out on a stroll through the woods.


"Findekáno!" Irissë hammered on the door. From beyond she could hear a muffled mumble somewhere between _go away_ and _Súlimo_ _damn it_. And then the door was being eased into a sliver of light, a mellow drench of blue, which was abruptly stoppered by a sheet-draped Findekáno as he wedged himself into the entryway.

"Is there anything you need?" Findekáno groused, hand darting out to clutch at the sheet as it caught in a precarious dangle low over his hips.

Irissë plowed past him into the bedroom. "I need your tree."

" _Irissë_ —" Findekáno sputtered, whipping round, before her words filtered through. A frown shoveled two little trenches between his eyebrows, and he blinked at his sister with a tipping quirk of the head. "Beg pardon?"

"I need your tree," Irissë repeated as she flung aside the sea ripple of the curtains into the dazzling brightness outside. "You, brother mine, don't truly appreciate your living arrangements. The front door has been off-limits after that mishap with Tyelko—" Irissë paused, slid a glance toward the blanketed lump crowded into an island of mattress. "No offense meant, Maitimo."

The lump sprouted a topiary of ginger hair and equally crimson freckled cheeks. "None taken," Maitimo muttered and with a slightly alarmed widening of the eyes reminded Findekáno to mouth an apology and close the door.

"Well. You do share a house with him, I don't need to tell _you_ what a menace he is."

A quiet snort puffed out of Findekáno, an amused tilt of the lip. "Only him, sister?"

Irissë flashed a grin over her shoulder as she shimmied the window open. "I'll have you know alcohol was the only help he had in persuading Tilion."

A knotted twist of a wince passed over Maitimo's features. "Valar, that horn must have woken up half of Tirion."

"More than half," Irissë rectified, distracted, as she leaned her upper body out into the warmth and the sun. A rosy blush kissed over her cheeks as she turned, and through the glimmer of a smile not meant for them she flicked her request: "Leave the window open, please?"

"Wait—" Maitimo began, yet Irissë had already vaulted over the sill and was sitting with her toes scraping the branch sprawled just below the window. She lunged, and braced herself against the trunk, just as Maitimo filled the casement. "You're not meeting with Tyelkormo, are you? Amillë has kept him nearly roped to herself since the Valaróma incident."

"No," Irissë gusted, rocking on the branch, and filled the silence with a secret tucked into the corners of her mouth.

Arms roasted golden encircled Maitimo's waist, and above his shoulder a pair of blue eyes gleamed. "Safe tree-climbing, sister!"

Maitimo turned to his cousin with a helpless uplifting of eyebrows, and Findekáno shrugged, coaxed him back into the swish of sheets. "It runs in the family," he explained, and the conversation petered out for a long, long time.

X X

Elenwë swept up from her cross-legged recline on the grass as Irissë dropped at the foot of the tree. She was barefoot, a dappled bundle of pale braided hair and diaphanous layers swaying like sea foam.

"Irissë," she greeted with warmth, clasping her into an embrace. She held her a second too long, an inch too close, pressing a smile to her shoulder as she spooled herself away. "Your bird scared Ammë into dropping her plates."

Irissë laughed and could not bring herself to care that her mirth gamboled in a too-loud rush round her parents' garden. "A pigeon, Elenwë. Turukáno would lecture you into the Waning of Telperion if he were here."

Elenwë swatted at her arm and in the process her frock capsized into a golden-brown shoulder dusted with freckles. Irissë beamed, she stretched to run her fingers over that warm, warm skin, up into flyaway braids, stealing Elenwë's smile in a kiss.

Elenwë loosed a sweet mewl against her lips. Her palms latched onto Irissë's cheeks and firmly she extricated herself. "Do not tempt me, dear heart, lest we never leave the garden."

"What better way to pass the time?" Irissë slipped her arms around her waist, yet Elenwë wriggled away in a wash of giggles.

"I have something to show you." She cradled Irissë's hand, tugging, and Irissë squeezed back.

X X

Elenwë patted the froth off the neck of the palomino mare they had ridden into the woods. Irissë was still bright-cheeked and bright-eyed, with the whip of the wind and Elenwë's back canting against her as the mare trotted on.

"What is it you have planned?" Irissë asked as she nudged the mare deeper into the forest, to bask in green-leafed shade until their return.

"I shan't be lured into spoiling the surprise," Elenwë teased, hooking her arm through Irissë's own and picking her meandering way through the hall of boles. "It will be worth your while, I promise."

" _You_ are always worth my while," Irissë murmured, and Elenwë drew her closer.

It was dark here—a gold-tinged darkness that seeped among the breathing trees. The leaves rustled and whispered, a muted chorus, and Irissë realized they were responding to something ancient fluttering a pulse through the arteries of the forest. Raw energy crooned its weaving path along leaves and boughs, less a lullaby than a tingling readiness that made Irissë suddenly aware of each thump of her heart. She turned with a question stirring in her chest, and eyes the deep brown of smoky quartz glittered as Elenwë smiled.

"It's _her_ , yes."

Sensation throbbed down to the tiniest details, details Irissë was sure had not been there minutes before. The smoothness of Elenwë's skin where her arm still dangled through Irissë's own, the prickle of grass against her bare ankles, the air plucking at her flushed cheeks, the drumbeat of her pulse and the thunder of her blood.

They walked and walked, and from the bones of the earth a sound seemed to emanate, chanting that moiled in the air. To a tree Elenwë steered her, a tree spiked with branches down to its very roots, and she climbed up into the topmost bassinet of boughs after Elenwë. And then—

Then Irissë saw. Through leaves glossed a lush green, she saw the dance, and saw that it had no pattern. That it needed no pattern. It undulated among tree trunks, spilled into the glade and there hand-in-hand the dancers merged. Golden heads, faces Irissë had never seen before, faces slack and blazing and glorious, and she stared, mesmerized.

" _Look_." With a press of elbow to ribs Elenwë reeled in her attention, pointing a finger in the direction of a clump of trees on the further side of the clearing. Boughs grasped one another into a bower, and a figure was threading in and out of it, graceful and gliding, in laughter of leaves and chatter of birds, wailing a low pulse of a note into the song. Irissë felt dizzy watching her, for surely it must be _her_. Vána the Ever-young. She whirled in and out of her vision, and though Irissë longed to follow her dance, to stare and stare and stare and feel the moves skitter in her own limbs, she could never pinpoint the Valië.

And suddenly Irissë felt herself a trespasser on a bubble of intimacy. "Are we—" She swallowed. She had not taken her eyes off the dance. "Are we allowed here?"

"Of course," Elenwë whispered, nestling into her side. "Anyone is."

"Yet no one ever comes out here." Irissë felt she understood. Little known the cult seemed, and yet fewer desired knowledge of it.

"I used to sit here and watch before I was drawn in."

Irissë still stared, a hum in her throat her only answer, as Elenwë nuzzled against her shoulder, lips a rose-touch over the spot just beneath her ear. Elenwë's hand snuggled between Irissë's thighs, and Irissë glanced at her, glanced at her brown eyes flashing liquid and her lips curving into a promise.

She kissed those lips, plumped them with teasing nips and her own ardor curling into Elenwë. "Here?" she asked, though it tasted of honeyed invitation.

Elenwë laughed and the leaves tittered with her. "Anywhere, beloved."


End file.
